Bosses have gotten bad because the c-suite has metricized everything. Thirty years ago there was none of this constant NPS feedback or strongly agree/disagree surveys. You remember when the cashiers at fast food places started asking you to fill out those surveys and earn a free double whatever on your next visit? That was an executive making up one more number to justify their bloated salary at the expense of every employee beneath them in the hierarchy. These days it is all about the numbers, and the people who are best at making the numbers higher are fucking sociopaths who bring those numbers up by crushing the humanity out of people, so they float to the top like the megalomaniacal turds they are.

Ask yourself when the last time you had honest feedback directly from your boss, that wasn't veiled in three layers of web forms and paper trails designed to make it impossible for you to get a raise for the good work you were doing. For me, it was five years ago, before the pandemic, when my boss advocated for me directly to her supervisor, cut right through the shit and told them, "if you do not pay him what he's worth, we will lose him and this department will be underwater." She didn't need a meeting to tell me what my peers thought of my work and how it could be improved, like so many MBA managers who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to my skillset, we worked together and when I fucked up, she let me know and showed me how to fix it, because she knew how to do the job she was asking me to do.

She left because she got tired of dealing with the CEO, son of former CEO, who thought he could charisma his way through massive failures to our partners and clients because of his incompetent leadership. He decided that the reason it didn't work was because the crew didn't read enough Patrick Lencioni new age management books, so we all got to read about the fucking Fantasyland workplace where everyone who aligns to the metrics he pulled out of his ass gets to go to corporate blowjob heaven, and also every hug between two men has to be underscored "100% NOT GAY."